In just three days, Census Explorer has empowered thousands of users to create millions of data maps.  The visualization project opens up data from 1990 to the present through interactive maps developed by Social Explorer.  Since the launch on Tuesday, over 55,000 users have created more than 2,200,000 maps.  (Try the site for yourself here.)

Census Explorer is built on the same revolutionary technology as Social Explorer, but offers just a taste of our website's full suite of data and tools.  Social Explorer users can access Census data from 1790 to the present, customize reports, create presentations and slideshows, embed and share maps, and more.  Click here for more information about Social Explorer Premium and how to subscribe.  

Journalists around the nation have also used Census Explorer to dig into demographic trends both nationally and locally.   Check out the media highlights below to inspire your own map creations.

Video featuring Michael Ratcliffe from the Census Bureau Jax News 4-WJXT

"The South is America's High School Dropout Factory" The Atlantic

Are Americans educated enough? How you answer that question—which seems to obsess certain newspaper editorial boards—really depends on where in the country you look. Some states compete with the best school systems in the world. Some seem to be racing for the bottom. Today, I wanted to offer up three vivid illustrations of how educationally balkanized we really are, courtesy of the Census Bureau's delightful new interactive data-mapping tool…

"These 2 Cities Are Now Exclusively For Rich People" Huffington Post

Few cities in the U.S. embody the growing divide between rich and poor quite like New York and San Francisco. In just the past 20 years, both have changed from economically diverse melting pots to exclusive playgrounds for the rich.

The change is clear in striking new visualizations from the U.S. Census Bureau, crunching data from its latest American Community Survey of population and income.

In each of the pictures below…

"6 Maps That Show How The United States Has Changed Since 1990" Buzzfeed

Using Census Explorer, a tool from the U.S. Census Bureau that allows users to track statistics in states and counties, you can see how things have changed from 1990 to 2000 to 2012. The data is from the 1990 and 2000 census and 2008-2012 American Community Survey.

"Cenus Bureau makes mapping demographics online a snap" Merced Sun-Star

People who are clever with computers and savvy about statistics are able to “map” demographic data in ways that readily reveal important facts about communities.

For those of us who are not techno geeks, however, turning numbers into understandable color-coded maps is nearly impossible.

But there’s good news for do-it-yourself demographers and folks who like to delve into what makes communities tick.

The U.S. Census Bureau this week launched a remarkably easy-to-use interactive mapping website called Census Explorer…

"'Immigrant suburbs' emerge in latest census sweep" Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Foreign-born populations are moving out of the central cities. Even outer-ring suburbs are becoming more culturally and racially diverse….

Those moves are visible in a new online mapping program the Census Bureau unveiled on Tuesday, called Census Explorer. The program allows people to easily trace key changes in their own neighborhoods from 1990 to 2000 to today…

"Census bureau releases 'New Portrait of America's Communities'" KARE 11 Sunrise (NBC)

When you think Census Bureau, you usually think population. But it doesn't just count people, it also helps track living situations and neighborhood environments within the country. Just this week, the Census released its "New Portrait of America's Communities" report.

The bureau also has a new tool this year, to help you go online and look at what makes up your neighborhood. The "Census Explorer", is an interactive mapping toolthat gives easier access to neighborhood-level statistics…

"Map: The Astonishing Concentration of High-Income Earners Around Washington, D.C." The Atlantic

Six of the top-ten richest counties are in Virginia and Maryland, and 13 of the top-30 richest counties form a continuous circle around the nation's capital…

To see median household income and more in your own state, county, and neighborhood, check out Census Explorer. 

"7 Revealing Maps About Philly's Demographics" Philly.com

The Census Bureau released a new mapping tool this week that lets users easily access maps with demographic data at the census-tract level.

We took a look at the bureau's maps of the Philadelphia area, checking out how the foreign-born population, education levels, home-ownership rates, household incomes and other data vary across the city…

"Where Renters Live" The Atlantic

Alongside a wealth of new data released Tuesday from the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau unveiled a nice new mapping tool that makes it possible to visualize individual neighborhoods by everything from the age of the local population to the median income to the share of residents with a high school diploma. The most recent picture is based on new five-year ACS data from 2007-2012.

But the tool also pulls in results form the 1990 and 2000 censuses, making it possible to compare states, counties and census tracts over time across each of these categories.

We can envision a lot of uses for the new Census Explorer (pick just about any city, for example, and you can watch its population age over the last 20 years). But one less commonly mapped detail about local communities popped out: the share of residents, by census tract, who live in homes they own themselves…